A medical team specialized in eye surgery at King Khalid Eye Specialist Hospital performed three stem cell transplants for three citizens, after they grew within two weeks in the hospital’s corneal stem cell bank laboratory, in a step described as the first of its kind using this technology in the Middle East.
The first operation was performed yesterday on a 58-year-old man, while the other two operations were performed today on a 28-year-old man and a 10-year-old girl, all of whom suffered chemical burns in the eye.
Dr. Saeed bin Ahmed Al-Mutawa, consultant ophthalmologist, director of medical cooperation and eligibility for treatment at King Khalid Eye Specialist Hospital, said that a sample of the three patients’ stem cells was taken from the healthy eye of each patient two weeks before the operation, and placed in the hospital’s stem cell laboratory until it was completed. After that, each patient underwent a cell transplant surgery in the affected eye, indicating that the three operations were crowned with success, praise be to God.
Dr. Saeed Al-Mutawa explained during the direct live transmission of surgical operations in the lecture hall of the Eye Hospital, that this method is one of the latest findings in modern science in eye surgery, and is done by cultivating stem cells in the eye to activate and multiply, and then restore sight to patients with problems. Superficiality in the cornea caused an opacity on it, noting that this technique will help in performing corneal operations for the largest possible number of patients due to the large availability of transplanted cells.
Al-Mutawa indicated that the time of performing a single surgical operation using this technique varies from patient to patient, due to the presence of many plasters and large wounds in the eye in some patients, which requires taking a large amount of time to perform it, but on average the operation takes about an hour.
He pointed out that such operations are highly successful, and many patients will benefit from them, noting that King Khalid Eye Hospital performs 1200 corneal operations every year in the usual way by taking cells from the healthy eye and cultivating them directly in the affected eye, but this modern technology will increase Serving many patients who need it at a rate of about 5%, due to the availability of quantities of stem cells in the bank''s laboratory.
For his part, the Executive Director of King Khalid Eye Specialist Hospital, Dr. Abdulelah bin Abbad Al-Tuwairqi, explained that the results of the three operations will appear approximately two weeks from today, indicating that the corneal stem cell laboratory at the Eye Hospital is the first of its kind in the Middle East, where it is located in some European countries, Japan, and some Latin American countries.
